


VLD Whumpmas Day One: Fever

by taylor_tut



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Fever, Gen, Lance (Voltron) Whump, Langst, Sick Character, Sick Lance (Voltron), Sickfic, Soul Bond, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-13
Updated: 2017-12-13
Packaged: 2019-02-14 03:26:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12998841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taylor_tut/pseuds/taylor_tut
Summary: The Blue Lion is captured and lost. What's best for Lance might be his worst fear.





	VLD Whumpmas Day One: Fever

Blue had been taken.

Despite Pidge and Hunk’s best efforts, her tracking system was down, possibly sabotaged, and there was no telling where she could be now. It had been two days, and though everyone knew that Lance had a special connection with his Lion, no one had expected him to take the loss this hard.

“Lance,” Shiro called softly, “hey. I think maybe you should come spar. It might get your mind off… you know, everything.” Lance barely lifted his head from the couch, his eyes dazedly rolling to stare up at his leader.

“No thanks,” he declined. 

“Okay,” Shiro said patiently, “that’s fine. How about you just come watch Keith and I, then? We’re going to be trying some new moves, and you might find them interesting. At the very least, I know how much you enjoy watching me kick Keith’s butt in training,” he winked. 

“I  _said_  no,” Lance snapped, shutting his eyes and massaging them with a lazy hand. “I don’t wanna move.”

“You haven’t moved all day,” Keith interjected, standing in the doorway. “Come on. You’re watching us spar.”

“Not the boss’a me,” Lance replied. It lacked the usual heat or wit that Lance usually brought to his arguments with Keith, and Shiro felt a bit of worry bubble up in his stomach. 

“You’re right; I’m not,” Keith agreed easily. Then, out of nowhere, Lance was being picked up and tossed over a shoulder like a sack of potatoes. 

“Keith!” Lance screeched, “Put me down!”

Keith deposited Lance in a chair in the training room, swaddling him in his blanket (he was shivering, and Keith wasn’t a monster) and letting him lie across the seats. 

“You can get up and leave, if you want,” he gloated. Now, if Lance wanted to be a baby, at least he’d have to do a walk of shame to go back to pouting on the couch.

Lance sighed, but shook his head. “Just get on with it,” he conceded.

Shiro was a little shocked at the sudden maturity Lance was displaying. Usually the Queen of Petty (he had a shirt that said that; it was apparently a long story that Lance never seemed to have the time to get into), now he was quietly spectating simply because Keith had carried him here? It was concerning at best and foreboding at worst. 

“Alright, on my signal,” Shiro began, turning to Keith, who nodded. “One, two–,”

“Lance?!” 

“Three!” Shiro had already lunged forward in a tackle before he could even register that Keith was distracted, but as soon as he pinned him, Keith was squirming under him.

“Shiro, Shiro, let me up; something’s–Lance.” Shiro looked up at the chairs where they’d left the boy, and indeed, there was cause for panic. Lance’s eyes were closed, and his hand, which had been holding his phone, now hung limply off the side of the chairs, his phone on the ground. 

Pushing himself off Keith, Shiro rushed to Lance’s side and dropped to his knees. 

“Lance?” he called, tapping his cheeks,  “hey, Lance, can you hear me?” 

He got no reply.  But the tapping of Lance’s face had made one thing clear: he was running hot. He pressed his hand to his own face, then to Lance’s, and winced. Lance’s face felt almost sunburned, blistering with surface heat like a sidewalk in the summer. 

“He’s burning up,” Shiro fretted. “We need to get Allura and Coran.”

Keith ran off to get them, leaving Shiro tend to Lance. He wasn’t sure how much the Alteans would understand about human illness and the physiological responses to them, but he knew that before anything else could be done, that fever needed to come down. 

He scooped Lance up and sprinted for the showers, turning the water on lukewarm and holding him in his lap under the stream.

“Shiro? Where did you go?” Keith called.

“In here,” he replied, straining to hear three sets of footsteps. Good. Keith had found the castle’s leaders.

Allura bent down to Lance’s level, her hands slowly and carefully probing. 

“Has he woken up at all?” Coran asked in a hushed tone, discouraged by the shaking of heads. 

“He appears to be very ill,” Allura said gravely. She pressed her hand to his forehead in what appeared to be a normal, human gesture, but lost that imagery when she held it there, closing her eyes until her facial tattoos glowed.

“How long has his mind-link been open?” she whispered.

“Do you think it’s got something to do with Blue being MIA?” Keith ignored the question.

“Paladins in the past have been known to acquire real injuries and feel pain when their Lions are damaged, so long as their souls are connected. I fear that if the Blue Lion has been left on a hot planet, that her rising temperature may be responsible for Lance’s illness.”

Shiro paled. “What can we do?” he asked. “Can’t he just turn off the mind-meld?”

Allura looked him in the eyes, looking serious and grim. 

“I’m afraid that only the Lion’s pilot can communicate telepathically with their corresponding Lion. The soul link must be terminated by Blue herself, and right now, Lance’s connection to her is the only thing that would give her a chance at rescue.”

Keith stood, aghast. “There’s got to be something!” 

“Lance won’t like it,” she dodged. 

“What is it?”

“Well, while a pilot can only talk to their own Lion, each Lion of Voltron can communicate with one another. One of you could… ask your Lion to… to…” she trailed off, then took a steadying breath.. “To cut Lance’s tie to her.”

Shiro frowned. “Won’t that mean…?”

“That Lance will no longer be able to connect with Voltron; yes.” 

Neither boy responded, so Coran stood.

“I’ll get the others.”

* * *

Pidge, Hunk, Keith, and Shiro sat in a circle with their mind-melding headbands on. Each of them knew just how much being a paladin meant to Lance, knew just how much it would destroy him to be ejected from the team. None of them wanted to be the person to request that Lance’s soul tie be severed.

Not one of them wanted that burden, but before the circle disbanded, Lance’s fever had broken.


End file.
